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T O P I C R E V I E W

LM-12

Where is this Apollo 8 plaque located?

On this spot Apollo 8 Astronauts Colonel Frank Borman Captain James Lovell & Lt Colonel William Anders first touched Earth at 14:37:35 after their historic manned flight around the Moon 28 December 1968

cfreeze79

I'd wager it would be on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Just a guess, though.

LM-12

I think you might be right.

My first guess was on the deck of the USS Yorktown when they stepped off the helicopter, but that would have been December 27.

The following day, the Apollo 8 crew was flown from the Yorktown to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu. The Yorktown, with the command module onboard, arrived in Hawaii on December 29.

The USS Yorktown is now a museum in Charleston, South Carolina.

ea757grrl

The moment may be seen in the special report contained here. (This was the first take of two on this special report, by the way, but the film contained therein is the same.)

For the record, the aircraft from which they disembarked at Hickam was a C-1 Trader, BuNo 136775 (RW-775), operated by VR-30.

From many visits to Yorktown over the years, there has never been any marker I've seen commemorating where the astronauts disemarked from the helicopter; much of the flight deck has been replaced with a concrete-like material as the wood beneath the non-skid has deteriorated, but even back when most of the original flight deck surface remained I never saw any markers there, or anywhere else aboard the ship. I could be wrong, but I never saw anything other than in exhibits here and there.

27 December 1968: The first men to circle the moon – Apollo 8 astronauts, Air Force Colonel Frank Borman, Navy Captain James A. Lovell Jr., and Air Force Major William A. Anders, splashed down at 10:51 a.m., approximately 1,000 miles southwest of Hawaii, thus concluding its historic lunar orbit mission. The crew arrived at Hickam AFB on 28 December 1968, en route to the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. They received a large and festive welcome (including leis, grass-skirted hula girls, and many high-ranking civilian and military officials among the some 10,000 persons on hand to greet them) as they set foot on American soil for the first time since their liftoff from Florida.

28 May 1969: Colonel Frank Borman, Apollo 8 Command Pilot, returned to Hickam for a ceremony dedicating a plaque located where he and his crew first stepped onto American soil following their historic moon-circling flight in December 1968.

The schedule is included in the "Apollo 8 Recovery Post-Mission Report" submitted by the Commanding Officer of the USS Yorktown.

ea757grrl

As it happens, if you go to that video link up above, going a few installments earlier in the series will show you raw footage of the crew's fly-off from Yorktown once they were within range of Hickam. Interesting stuff.